Chapter I

Ethnic Conflicts in the Caucasus 1988-1994

Introduction

Since 1988, Transcaucasia and parts of the North Caucasus have
been the scene of turmoil. There have been numerous latent and
overt claims and counterclaims concerning national statehood,
administrative status, ethnic identity and borders. Never before,
since the turbulent period of 1918-21 which followed the fall of
the Russian empire, have conflicts raged with such deadly
animosity. Old ethnic wounds have reopened, leading in some cases
to sustained warfare, in others to ethnic strife punctuated by
intermittent clashes.

Geopolitical changes in the region have been one of the main
underlying causes of ethnic conflicts. Just as in 1918-21, when
the Caucasian conflicts followed the demise of the Russian
empire, these have come on the heels of the weakening and then
break-up of the USSR. Geopolitics is a function of the vital
interests of states and societies. Thus the Warsaw Pact served
the purpose of preserving the social system and securing the
socio-economic development of the coalition, by repelling the
perceived threat from the West. With the defeat of the Soviet
Union in the Cold War, these interests changed abruptly, and a
reorientation of the Eastern bloc's ruling elites to Western-type
free-market economies ensued. The weakening of communist control
from the Centre put an end to common ideological interests shared
between the different national elites. These persuaded public
opinion in their countries that a transition to a free-market
economy, personal freedom and Western aid could better be ensured
by economic and political sovereignty. For the elites of the
titular nationalities of the Transcaucasian republics (Georgia,
Armenia and Azerbaijan), breaking loose from the influence of
Moscow became a priority. The federal division of the USSR - in
particular, the existence of higher- and lower-ranking
administrative units based on ethnic and territorial principles -
became an impediment to the titular elites' national projects.
These projects manifested themselves in attempts to create (or,
in the case of Armenia, which was nearly 90% Armenian-populated
by 1988, to consolidate) statehood on an ethnic basis. In
Georgia, this national project collided with the separate
statehood, language and cultural interests of the Abkhazian
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic (Abkhazian ASSR) and of the
South Ossetian Autonomous Oblast (South Ossetian AO). Azerbaijan
was confronted with the problem of the Nagorno-Karabakh
Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) region, populated mainly by Armenians.
In Armenia, the perceived injustice of the international treaties
of the early 1920s, which ensured border divisions within the
region,(1) reinforced the
Armenian determination to hold on to
Karabakh, viewed as the only part of historic Armenia outside the
republic's borders still populated by an Armenian majority. Thus
Karabakh represented both a raison d'Ętre of the Armenian
national project and a centre-piece of the Azeri one. It might be
added that, in both Armenia and Azerbaijan, the national
movements did not start out as anti-Soviet, but initially
included demands for the Kremlin to ensure the validity of their
respective national claims: in the case of Armenia, for the NKAO
to be attached to it, and in the case of Azerbaijan, to prevent
this. It was the inability of the Kremlin to satisfy these
demands that set the movements in both republics on a path of
independence.

An institutional vacuum was created as titular nations
asserted their rights. The nationalism of larger nationalities
found a counterpart in the nationalism of national minorities.
National minorities, concerned for their security and survival,
mobilized their own populations, tried to ensure exclusive
administrative control over their territory and appealed for help
to the Centre, to kindred ethnicities across the border and/or to
neighbouring republics; they set up paramilitary formations, and
expelled "foreign" nationals along with government troops sent to
subdue the "rebels".

The Ossetian-Ingushi conflict stands apart from the basic
pattern we have just outlined. This is not a case of a national
minority struggling to preserve its existing autonomy within a
dominant titular nation, but a dispute over parts of the region
which have seen repeated border changes and forcible population
transfers within them. In other words, it is not a conflict over
ethnic status, but a purely territorial dispute.

The interests involved in gaining sovereignty and statehood
can submerge socio-economic interests. In Georgia, Armenia and
Azerbaijan, no price seemed too high in the national cause. The
Georgian president, Gamsakhurdia, isolated his country from the
international community; the Azeri president, Elcibey, reoriented
his country towards Turkey, risking the loss of the Russian
market, while Armenian leaders were willing to endure an oil, gas
and transport blockade by Baku for years rather than stop
supporting Karabakh. The predominance within national elites of
particular groups, such as leaders of military formations,
criminal mafias and war profiteers, did little to favour a
peaceful solution to ethnic conflicts.

Some regional leaders realized that the price paid for
sovereignty had been too high. Shevardnadze and Aliyev stopped
ignoring economic and military factors and turned to their
traditional partner, Russia. They did so while, at the same time,
preserving other, newly-found regional partners and striving to
avoid the less palatable elements of their former relationship
with their northern neighbour. This new opening up to Russia,
together with the political activities of new regional states
like Iran and Turkey and the policies of international
organizations, have created new possibilities for crisis
management in conflicts.

To explain why conflicts break out, geopolitics and
socio-economic interests alone are not enough. A salient factor
in the conflicts under discussion is the use of history in the
service of particular nationalist demands. Thus, in Abkhaz
literature, one finds references to the Abkhazian kingdom which
existed in the 9th and 10th centuries. This is instrumental to
the Abkhazian claim for sovereignty over the region, even though
the same kingdom could equally be described as a common
Georgian-Abkhazian state, with a predominance of Georgian
language and culture. Georgian authors, in turn, stress the
allegedly non-Abkhaz character of pre-17th-century Abkhazia to
support their case. In a more extreme variant, a similar
historical perspective gave rise to the theory of "hosts"
(Georgians) and "guests" (all other minorities) on Georgian land.
Thus both protagonists use "suitable" historic periods (antiquity
and the Middle Ages for the Georgians, the Middle Ages and the
Soviet period, when Abkhazia nominally had autonomy, for the
Abkhaz). Ossetian politicians impute the decrease in population
in South Ossetia during the Soviet era to Georgian policies,
forgetting that it was partly due to the resettlement of South
Ossetes in the former Ingushi-populated territory (itself a
matter of historic dispute with the Russian Cossacks). An
influential Armenian writer, Zori Balayan, presents a view of
history which furthers Armenian interests by appealing to Russian
imperial ambitions and denigrating the legitimate nationhood of
Azerbaijan - that "tentative country with tentative Union
borders", as he puts it.(2)
In Balayan's view, when Russia fought
her early 19th-century wars against Iran to annex Eastern Armenia
to Russia, Azerbaijan did not exist as a state, nor did the
Azeris exist as a nationality (here Balayan is alluding to the
relatively late, 20th-century emergence of Azeri national
identity, with Azerbaijan, in his opinion, forming part of
ancient Armenia). The results of those wars were allegedly
legitimized in international treaties "for all time". Thus
Russia, according to Balayan, should continue to keep Azerbaijan
within its sphere of influence and ward off Turkish influence. If
Russia does not, it will be failing to see justice done to the
Armenians, its loyal Christian subjects in the past, who had
entrusted it with their fate. A reference to Azerbaijan as a
formerly Armenian territory, made as it was in the wake of
Karabakh Armenian victories in 1993, implicitly carried the
message that the Armenians were entitled to annex as much of
Azerbaijan as they could. Azerbaijani writers, for their part,
have tried to refute the Armenian origins of the ancient
inhabitants of Karabakh.

The validity of the right to self-determination, as against
the principle of the territorial integrity of states, is a thorny
issue, and one which finds no satisfactory solution among the
protagonists in the conflicts within the former Soviet Union.
Contemporary international law recognizes the right of
independence for colonial peoples and annexed territories, but
not for parts of such territories, nor for national minorities in
internationally recognized states.(3) This is designed to prevent
wars between nations whose borders have been demarcated, often
disregarding the ethnic composition of the territories in
question, by former colonial and imperial powers. Another reason
is to safeguard the rights of "minorities within minorities" and
protect them from ethnic cleansing. Taken in the ex-Soviet
context, the principle of territorial integrity has been invoked
primarily by the countries newly admitted to membership of the
UN, whose independence has been internationally recognized
(Georgia, Azerbaijan) and by autonomous republics whose borders -
and not status - are contested (North Ossetia). Georgia and
Azerbaijan invoked this principle when they revoked the
Soviet-era status of Abkhazia, South Ossetia and
Nagorno-Karabakh. The declarations of independence by the latter
group of republics have not been recognized by the international
community, although the UN de facto recognizes Abkhazia as a
negotiating partner by sponsoring peace talks in Geneva between
it and Georgia. The Abkhaz, South Ossetes and Karabakh Armenians,
who do not "qualify" for independence according to UN principles,
invoke the right to self-determination and consequently seek the
support of regional players.

A major factor which will be discussed in this chapter is
the position taken at various stages in the conflicts by the
Soviet, and later Russian, leaders. For the Soviet authorities,
and also under Gorbachev, the main political priority in dealing
with events in Armenia and Azerbaijan (as in all the other
republics) was to ensure the preservation of Communist Party
control. This implied a different attitude to each of the
national movements, depending on the degree to which they could
be contained by local Party bodies, the relative weight of their
respective leaders in Kremlin circles (thus Aliyev's friendship
with Brezhnev, and his presence in the Politburo since the
Andropov era, meant that Azeri claims would get a better hearing)
and the economic leverage the republic in question was able to
bring into play. The amount of pressure that could be applied by
democrats or hard-liners in Moscow in any given case was also
important. Of lesser importance was the intrinsic value attached
to such considerations as the legality of ethnic claims and
constitutional provisions regarding the rights of individual
republics. Thus the Kremlin fought against separatism in
Karabakh, where the movement was outside central control and
could destabilize the communist regime in Armenia and Azerbaijan,
but made no attempt to suppress separatism in Abkhazia, where the
national movement was at odds with independence-minded Georgia.

The break-up of the USSR was accompanied by the wholesale
plunder of Soviet military equipment by local paramilitary and
criminal elements, often with the connivance of corrupt elements
in the Soviet military. According to Valeri Simonov - former
Chief of Intelligence of the 19th Independent Anti-Aircraft Army,
stationed in Georgia until the break-up of the USSR - whereas,
before 1992, the Soviet military grouping in Transcaucasia had
had enough weapons and ammunition to make a thrust to the Persian
Gulf and be able to wage, in autonomous fashion, a month-long
full-scale war in that area, by 1993, Russian might in that
region was less than 10 per cent of that of the former
Transcaucasian Military District.(4)

Russian policies in the region have vacillated between the
principle of non-intervention in the affairs of the warring sides
and an assertive, interventionist policy, including the use of
Russian troops for peacekeeping activities. In the analysis of
these conflicts, we shall also deal with the efforts made by all
sides to use the interests guiding Soviet and Russian policies
(and in some cases, those of other powers as well) to their own
advantage.